


Timestamp

by TortiTabby



Series: Bingo Fics! [3]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Character Death, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 19:57:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16204589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TortiTabby/pseuds/TortiTabby
Summary: Everyone told me all through life when you lose someone that “It gets better. It gets easier. Life somehow goes on.” They said it when my parents passed. They said it when my brother passed or when the various loved pets we had passed. They said it about you.





	Timestamp

**Author's Note:**

> **CHARACTER DEATH!  
> **  
>  Please don't read if it is going to upset you!  
> Written for my Character Death and Age Difference squares on my Bingo Card  
>   
> This is the first time I've written First person for a fic so fingers crossed! It definitely felt weird!

 

Everyone told me all through life when you lose someone that “It gets better. It gets easier. Life somehow goes on.” They said it when my parents passed. They said it when my brother passed or when the various loved pets we had passed. They said it about you. 

I can't help but think they're wrong. It's been nearly two years since you died, Dan, and I'm still waiting for it to get better. I'm an old man, I don’t have that much longer to wait for. 

You were just shy of eighty years old. When you get to these years a four year age difference doesn't really make a difference at all. Still, I'm older. I selfishly wish I could have gone first but I can't imagine you in this pain. It's my only solace. 

I know the kids worry about me. I try to ease their minds and I think that I have by moving into the housing with assisted living. I get to pretend I’m not in an old folks home and they get to pretend that there’s a nurse watching me around the clock, rather than checking in every two or three hours.

I just got off of the phone with our eldest. Tommy was always a good boy and has grown into a great man and an excellent father himself. He wears his heart on his sleeve and cares nearly too much. He reminds me of you. 

Aubrey doesn’t call me as much but I know it’s hard for her to see me like this and to hear me talk about you, which i always inevitably do. She was so close with you and I love any part of them that they inherited from you but I sometimes wish she didn’t have your stubbornness or anger.  I forget that not everyone’s way of coping isn’t by remembering. I hope we haven’t done something wrong somewhere down the line and that she talks about you with her wife, even if she doesn’t talk about you with me. You know how I worry.

Does it get easier? I suppose so. I don’t ache from my head to my toes every time I wake up and remember that the dream you only exists there and that my reality is spent without you. I don’t feel like there is a hive of bees buzzing around inside of my head and a cloud of confusion around it as much as I used to. It was never easy. Us knowing and preparing for it wasn’t easy. You living to be 79 years old wasn’t easy. You leaving me _ever_ no matter how much notice or how old you aged to would _never_ be easy, and it never will be. Easier than the day you died? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Anything is easier than that.

Neither of us have ever been much for religion and I have to force myself to appreciate the sentiment of thoughtful sayings that I don't quite believe in. 

_“You know he’s watching you right now.”_  
_“You’ll see him again someday.”_  
_“He is probably so proud of you right now.”_ And I try to take it as the comfort it’s meant as, regardless of it meaning next to nothing to me. I don’t think I’ll see you again. I can rewatch our ancient videos and see you there or whenever I blink and close my eyes. But I won’t feel your eyes on me again or hear your laugh ring out in an empty room of just the two of us. I can make peace with that. I feel honored to my core that I got to spend my life with you. I’m so elated that the memories I get to look back on nearly all have you in them and that you are the person who I raised our family with.

 

The last, resigned thing, I hear when people try to comfort me about you is _“Life goes on.” _I guess it’s true. I can see it going on around me. I see the trees grow their leaves and then shed them in the fall and I can see our children growing older and growing their babies older. I feel like even if time is moving, life is going on, I stopped with you.__

____

____

There’s a timestamp where I haven’t budged an inch from and it was the minute I lost you. I’m here physically, for the kids, and because you would raise from the dead and murder me if I didn’t take care of myself. Life goes on but I didn’t. 

 

It’s not a sad, cold fact. I’ve lived a life I wouldn’t have even been able to dream up. I still have good days, great even. There are some days where my stomach hurts from how hard I laugh with our grandchildren or my old, spotted skin is warmed by the summer sun. There are some days that feel almost as good as it gets, only I’ve had that and know how it truly feels. I’m not the same man I was three years ago. Even if I live for another twenty years there is still a Dan shaped hole in my heart and the part of me that is stuck in time with your last smile that was aimed towards me. Still, life goes on.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Please_ let me know what you think!!
> 
> Or come and talk to me on tumblr!
> 
> tortitabby.tumblr.com


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